Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Five myths regarding the current refugee and migration crisis

During the current refugee and migration crisis, a
number of myths, often propagated to serve all kind of agendas, continue to hinder
the search for solutions. Here is an attempt to debunk five of them.

First
myth: “The solution is to force countries to take in refugees and spread them
across Europe”

Germany and France want“binding quotas [for refugees] within theEU to share the burden”, according to German Chancellor Merkel. The idea of quotas was proposed
by the European Commission as part of its “European
agenda on migration”. Only in May, French PM Valls calledthe idea "a moral and ethical mistake". A number
of member states, primarily from Eastern Europe, but also Spain still reject the idea to make this binding, which is why the EU
Commission plans to make the “relocation” of 120,000 refugees across the EU
voluntary.

This is a
complete sideshow.

First of all, these 120,000 refugees would be coming
from Greece, Italy and Hungary, so they are
already within the EU, which is supposedly safe.

Secondly, this plan is being developed after the
failure to reach the target to relocate 40.000 refugees from Italy and Greece,
following the trusted European Commission practice “When in trouble, double”.

Thirdly, if Poland would have to take in an estimated
9.000 refugees and Spain 15.000, these people can
easily travel to where the jobs are: Germany, given that Poland and
Spain are members of the passport-free Schengen zone.

Fourthly, if Merkel is really keen on damaging the
EU’s brand, boosting support for anti-migration populists while pitting EU
member states against each other, all without helping a single refugee, forcing
countries to take in refugees who’re already in safety anyway is the way to do
it.

The blame game just isn’t healthy. Germany is willing
to welcome up
to 800.000 people this year, almost quadrupling the amount, but it only
welcomed a very
average number of refugees - per capita - last year.
Switzerland welcomed four times as many refugees per capita last year and the
Netherlands welcomed 50% more than Germany. Did any Swiss or Dutch politician
lambast Germany last year?

Migration is a sensitive issue everywhere in the
world. It’s possible to convince people to allow more migrants in, but it’s a
bad idea to impose it. Spreading of refugees has little do with helping
refugees.

Last but not least, European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker apparently wants
that fines are being imposed on member states that opt out of his proposed relocation
mechanism. These sanctions would be paid into a special fund that would be used
to subsidise the countries that take part in the scheme. More than 1.5 billion
euro would
also be used “for the regions from where most of the migrants originate”,
ignoring how EU
funds amounting to 13.3 billion euro have often served to
strengthen corrupt cronies in the EU’s Southern neighborhood between 1995 and
2013. We can only wonder if Juncker hasn’t secretly become a paid agent of one
of Europe’s populist anti-migration parties, given that these kind of ideas are
likely to boost support for them.

Second
myth: “The solution is to end Schengen or increase EU border controls”

The
passport-free Schengen-zone, which includes 26 countries and is now
incorporated into the EU Treaty, is coming under severe fire. Last month, the Saxon branch
of Angela Merkel’s party called
for a discussion on suspending Schengen. Theo Francken, the Belgian State
Secretary for Migration has expressed what many people think, when stating:
“When I see that in some places there almost aren’t any controls at the borders
[of the EU], then internal controls will be needed.” Also Hungarian PM Orban hascalledborder control “the real issue”.

Would ending Schengen, which already offers a lot of room for border controls, solve much,
however?

According to EU border
agency Frontex, “most of thosewho currently reside in the EU illegally, originally
entered in possession of valid travel documents and a visa whose validity
period they have since overstayed”, while adding that “one of
the biggest entry route for migrants into the EU is via international airports”,
estimating that as many as
1.2 million irregular migrants maybe entering the EU every year in this way.
Obviously, the increasednumber of refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean
is altering the balance, but this is just to say that even if Europe would
manage to stop everyone at its external border, it would only deal with part of
the pressure. Again Belgian migration secretary Franckenpointed
outthat “my
external borders are [the international airport of] Zaventem and [the port of]
Zeebrugge”, who’re both located in Belgium. So abolishing Schengen – or kicking
countries that fail to guard their borders out of Schengen - wouldn’t change
that much, apart from destroying the great personal and economic benefits of
passport-free travel for citizens and companies operating within the
Schengen-zone.

It’s
estimated that in the last 15 years, more
than 23,000 people have lost their
lives while attempting to reach Europe, while the flow
hasn’t stopped. Also the brand new Hungarian fence on the border
with Serbia provesdisfunctional.
To be fair, it’s probably possible to try alternative solutions to guard the
Mediterranean border. One could try the Australian
approach of returning refugees to where the boats embarked or
to external centres where their asylum claims can be assessed. Since this
policy was implemented,
there has been criticism
of the external centres but only a limited number of boats have tried to make
the journey to Australia and no deaths have been reported, which means the
policy deserves to be considered. This would also likely hit human smugglers
hard. Furthermore, also posting
European liaison officers at airports all over the world to control whether
people aren’t trying to travel with false visa may help a bit, but all these
controls would still leave the challenge of those overstaying their visas. At
the end of the day, external protection or reinstating permanent border
controls won’t make up for domestic shortcomings but would impose a high cost
while only dealing with a part of the challenge at best.

Third myth: “The solution is
to get rid of the “Dublin”- arrangement”

Italy’s Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni is only one
of many, along with Dutch social democrat leader Diederik
Samsom, to demand
changes to the so-called Dublin
Regulation on asylum, which requires people seeking refuge in Europe to do
so in the first country where they set foot. He stated: "If we don't
renegotiate the Dublin rules, first of all the fact that one enters Europe and
not a specific country, we'll end up having to renegotiate Schengen and free
movement rules, which would be a defeat for Europe's politicians."

It’s of course the other way around. If “Dublin” is
aborted, “Schengen” is finished. If Italy would be allowed to provide all
migrants free passage to France, there is no way that France would want to
continue to be a part of the Schengen area, with its minimal border controls.

It’s also bizarre to see politicians calling for an
end to an arrangement which is partially
suspended – although not completely. Angela Merkel already admitted
that “the
Dublin approach is not working anymore, because so many refugees are arriving
at our external borders, that we can't leave Italy or Greece
alone to deal with this task”. Germany has now suspended Dublin for Syrian
refugees, while countries haven’t send back migrants to Greece since 2011 already after a
ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg which considered
this a violation of human rights. Merkel now doesn’t want to throw Dublin
completely out of the window and instead aims to deal with this through
spreading refugees, a solution which is also likely to fail, as mentioned
before.

Fourth
myth: “The solution is to harmonize
EU asylum policy”

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every
problem as a nail. The only hammer eurocrats have at their disposal is ever
more concentration of power at the EU level, so this is what they have in mind
as a response to the refugee and migrant crisis. Plans prepared long ago were
quickly taken from the shelf when the crisis erupted and are now being pushed
forward.

Proposals made
by the European
Commission, the
leaders of France and Germany, and Luxembourg, which currently holds the EU’s
Presidency, include turning the European Asylum Support Office (EASO) into a
fully-fledged European Refugee Agency – which would then be given the power to
investigate whether the same standards for granting asylum are applied everywhere in the EU. The idea is that this may
discourage refugees from making it to Germany, which last year reducedthe time for asylum-seekers to access its labour
market to three months.

In practice however, centralizing these kind of
regulations, which are often issued with a look on unemployment figures, may
lead to a mismatch between supply and demand. Spanish and German authorities
are in a better position to decide on this than an EU agency based in Malta.
The EU Treaty reserves the competence to fix numbers of immigrants from third
countries entirely to member states, but it shouldn’t be a surprise to see the
Commission trying to undermine this through the back-door by imposing which
standards member states employ to fix the numbers.

Also other proposals come down to forcing countries
into an EU straightjacket, while it’s not clear what the benefits are. The EU Commission will draw up a common list of "safe countries of origin”, as if EU member
states aren’t already able to make these decisions themselves. If the idea
behind this is insufficient trust into fellow Schengen-states, it probably
makes more sense to force the “untrustworthy” members out of Schengen, rather
than to end Schengen or attempting to micromanage decisions on who should be
allowed residence.

Merkel and Hollande have furthermore also called to
establish so-called “hotspot” “reception
centres” in Italy and Greece to
identify migrants arriving from outside the EU and separate those entitled to
asylum from illegal ‘economic’ migrants. This could be attractive for certain
refugees and may take some of the burden off Northern Europe. However, Italy
isn’t keen to agree with this, as it would face the prospect of large refugee
camps within its territory, and has made this plan dependent on revising the EU’s
Dublin-rules. Even if Italy and Greece would agree
to this, this may not be the way to dramatically reduce the number of people
obtaining residence status, if that’s the purpose. 62% of boat refugees are
from Syria, Iraq and Eritra and 75% of
people coming from these countries receive a positive decision, regardless of
the fact that they may have been in safety in Turkey already before or not. In
other words: most “boat people” are refugees or what national authorities consider
to be refugees at the moment.

There is little doubt that migration and opening
borders to trade and people benefits
the economy. A mere look at any given product or service in
today’s globalized economy makes clear that closing borders or raising barriers
for people to work together across borders can only stop progress.

Does that mean that allowing a lot of refugees in
will bail out Europe’s welfare states? Those are heading to bankruptcy, having
to deal with a lot of so-called implicit
debt, all kinds of unrealistic promises made to
citizens in terms of pension provision, health care and elderly care.
Unfortunately, the answer is: only very partially.

A few years ago, the European Commission has estimated that the so-called "sustainability gap" - the future shortage
of cash that the average EU member state is facing - would only be around 8%
smaller if the EU pursued a policy of keeping the net immigration ratio in the
coming decades at the 2008 level of 0.34% of total population. One can surely argue
it may help close perhaps 20% or 30% of the gap, but what it shows is that as
much as increased migration may be one factor in helping economic growth and
tax income, it would be false to claim that this is a panacea to prop up
Europe’s welfare model. For that, a combination is needed of working longer, a
default on promises made and/or liberalising the economy to boost
competitiveness and create economic growth.

So what’s the alternative?

Few would disagree with Irish rock star
Bono, who said: “Aid is just a stopgap (…) Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of
poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse.” Also, closer cooperation with non-EU countries
and perhaps the Australian approach can be part of the solution, as we have argued with Open Europe.

The question is whether we really should
wait for such long term solutions to take effect. In the years to come, many
will still trying to make it to Europe, and should we blame them? Who would
like to live in Syria, these days? It’s equally wrong to plainly dismiss
concerns of European voters, who have witnessed on the ground that integrating
large groups of people with a different cultural background is not without
problems.

I have suggested myself to welcome refugees voluntarily in a “free
haven” outside of the EU, where officials from richer countries would safeguard
law and order to allow an economy to develop. Multinationals may prefer to host
expensive production plants in these zones run by officials of countries with a
high level of rule of law, rather than in unstable places like Ethiopia or
Pakistan. Similar proposals have been made by US business man Jason
Buzi, who wants to give refugees their own “Refugee Nation” and Egyptian businessman Naguib Sawiris, the 10th richest man in
Africa, who has offered to buy an island off Italy or Greece in order to
rehouse hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing Syria and other conflicts.

If you want to help refugees, but you
can’t or don’t want to help them within Europe, you need to help them outside
of Europe. An agreement with third countries would be necessary for this.
Unrealistic? The EU is this year launching a pilot project to develop a number of “temporary”
reception centers in Niger, while France and Germany support opening similar centres in Egypt, Turkey or Lebanon.
Given that nothing is so permanent as a temporary government programme, the EU
may as well send police and justice personnel to these nascent EU refugee
camps, similar to what it did in Kosovo.

I don’t want to simply blame politicians
for not coming up with more ambitious and effective solutions, given that this
isn’t an ordinary crisis which is easy to solve. But precisely because of that,
we need solutions which go beyond ordinary management and more of the same. At
least Belgian centre-left daily De Morgen supports my proposal, writing that it “is an unexpected, unheard proposal. But
awaiting peace and prosperity in the Middle East, this looks like it’s going to
be a crisis which can only be dealt with in an unexpected, unheard-of manner.”